Looking over it again after a gap of quite a few years, the thing I found most fascinating were the testimonials by figures such as Timothy Leary, Richard Burton, Senator Proxmire, and President Johnson's daughter.
Since this issue is long out of print and I don't think its contents are v. easy to access, here's what Leary had to say:
Timothy Leary
J. R. R. Tolkien is a psychedelic writer. He "turned
on" not with LSD but by immersing himself in the study of ancient
languages, transcending space and time, leaving the twentieth century, and
seeing himself as a pre-Chaucerian scribe. He has returned from his trip and
communicated his views in the great mythic work of our time. The Lord of the Rings is a great epic
in the Homeric-Joycean vein.
Like all great mythic
sagas, Tolkien's trilogy is written at many levels and has generated countless
schools of interpretation, all of which seek the Message. To me, The Lord of the Rings is a morality
play-magical statement of the good-evil situation. Evil is power. (Note I do
not say "power is evil", a weaker game statement). Evil uses metal,
fire, stone, machinery and atomic energy to control, to manipulate, to conquer
good. Good for Tolkien is seed, wisdom, freedom, beauty, harmony of growing
things. At a time when our planet is in danger of destruction at the hands of
mechanical power, Tolkien's poetic and moral message is to cherish the wisdom
and freedom which we find around us in the order and beauty of nature.
To many of us who
have followed the "yoga" of LSD, Tolkien's trilogy is vital.
--so, there it is. A bit odd, but I've read worse.
blurbs that never
were:
"the great mythic work of our time" (Timothy
Leary)
Richard Burton? Richard Burton had a near-connection with Tolkien that I wonder if he knew about. He knew and worked with Nevill Coghill of the Inklings, who directed Burton's film of Marlowe's Dr Faustus. They'd met when Burton, as an air force cadet, was sent to Oxford for a term in 1943, where he played Angelo in a Coghill production of Measure for Measure. Also in that production, and also to become a friend of Burton's, was another Inkling to be, John Wain.
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